Make Drift a Myth

The subject most often written about in woodworking magazines is probably cutting dovetails. In second place – and not far behind – is likely resawing with a 14″ band saw.

To be sure, there is disagreement from one article to the inevitable next one, but the central theme is how to adjust the fence to “follow the drift” of the blade. The disagreement is about which shop-built or purchased equipment serves this task best.

After trying some of the methods to “follow the drift” with unsatisfactory results, I decided to take a contrary approach. It occurred to me that if your car has a tendency to drift right or left and you “follow the drift” you will have a very bad result. So what do you do? You overcome the drift to avoid disaster. And that’s what I do on my band saw as well.